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Friday, July 29, 2011

Musings: Love Medicine

Louise' Erdrich's Love Medicine is an intricate story centered on two Chippewa families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines, and the way the family members interact with each other. The story begins with June, a beautiful woman, down on her luck, whose sudden and accidental death has a profound effect on the lives of the people who knew her. Readers travel back and forth in time with multiple characters, experiencing their lives as they unfold, watching as they make mistakes, recover, and then stumble again. We see how the American government impacts their lives, how Christian missionaries abuse their culture, and how, over time, proud people become mistrustful and vengeful, falling into alcoholism, violence and dead ends.

Native American contemporary history is pretty bleak. It's a story of almost complete annihilation, isolation, broken promises and misguided compromises. Even using the phrase "Native American" in a way is defeatist- even 100 years ago, people knew tribes as being distinct, having very different ideas about life and how to live it. Now, there are so few of them left that we group them all together and are completely unaware of the nuances that separate one tribe from another.
Louise Erdrich writes about all this, but indirectly, through a series of short stories interwoven with each other to form a novel. We meet so many characters, all of them flawed, none of them very likeable and yet we can empathize with every one. There is so much sadness in this book- so much lost potential, so much despair, so much waste, often symbolized by bouts of extreme drunkenness and violence. The people in this story hurt each other, over and over again, and yet still readers cross their fingers and closer their eyes tight and wish that somehow, they'll all make it through okay in the end.

I didn't love this book, but I loved the writing. Erdrich writes like a poet, and while I had a lot of trouble while reading this book keeping characters separate in my mind, and understanding where in the timeline the plot was (it skips around a lot over 50 years), this was always very clear to me. Erdrich can write, and this is one of the most impressive first novels I've ever read. To do multiple points of views, all over the course of fifty years, is a very ambitious undertaking, but Erdrich manages it very well. It was me, with my stop-and-go reading habit, that made this read difficult. This isn't the sort of book you can pick up for twenty minutes a day, and then not read for four days, and then pick up again for another half hour. It requires concentration, organization and memory. Give it that much respect, and I think it will pay you back tenfold. Don't, and you may be left scrambling to understand what's happening, the way I did.

This is not a hopeful book. It details, starkly, life on a reservation. Its characters struggle with their lives, some sinking into despair on the reservation and others attempting to leave but finding that they are always somehow drawn back. Like Sherman Alexie described in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, being successful by American standards is not necessarily a positive thing to Native Americans. They hate and distrust the American justice system (understandably) and government, and so finding a way to balance personal ambition with cultural identity is a difficult path to navigate. Louise Erdrich's story was, to me, a companion novel to Absolutely True Diary, about the lives of the secondary characters many years in the future. I didn't love any of the characters- and in fact, disliked quite a few of them- but they were so mired in inevitability, in some sort of never-ending spiral, that it was hard not to feel compassion for them.

This was a great read, but it definitely requires commitment, engagement, and emotional strength. Definitely not a light summer read, but one I'm very glad to have read- and an excellent introduction to an author I'll be sure to look out for in the future.

12 comments:

Wow, that definitely sounds like a heavy and emotional read. It is so hard to read about all of the injustices done to the Native Americans. I am not normally drawn to this type of novel because I know it's going to be so emotional.

I just finished Shadow Tag by the same author about a months ago, and I am surprised by how many of the themes and ideas of these two books overlap. I had heard that Erdrich almost always writes about Native Americans, and it seems like that must be true. I was also really impressed with Shadow Tag as a peice of writing, but had a really hard time with the story and the characters. Everything was exceedingly bleak to me. Perhaps I will have to send you my copy to see what you make of it. Your reaction would be very interesting to me, given that you have read another of her books. This was quite and impressive review. Thanks for sharing it, Aarti!

I think all of Erdrich's novels are set in roughly the same place - characters and settings overlap, etc. The story of her marriage is almost as fascinating as her fiction, as well. I've read several of her "short stories", as well as her novel, The Master Butcher's Singing Club. She is a master at her craft.

I'll have to give this one a go! As I mentioned on my blog, I wasn't a huge fan of Painted Drum, but I just read a nonfic book by her and loved it, so with your endorsement I really want to give her fiction a second try.

I've been wanting to read Part-Time Indian, because the contemporary Native American experience is something I've wanted to learn more about. Do you suggest one over the other or do both have their merits?

Kari, I think the two are very different books. Part-Time Indian is sweet and funny and great, and Love Medicine is great and sometimes sweet, but certainly not funny. I read Part-Time Indian and it really piqued my interest in reading more about Native Americans, so I think if you're at that stage of wanting to try something, then I'd start with that one.

Her stories have, since, been collected into a single volume, which makes it a little easier to put together all the interconnections between characters who sprawl across volumes and volumes. Agreed that these are tough to read, but so beautifully crafted and memorable. Now I want to revisit and slip the novels in where they fit too!

The plight of Native Americans is something I've read next to nothing about. This is a huge hole in my reading history. Thanks for a great review and a peak into a book that will be a good one to add to my list.

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